


Asthenopia

by chimesong



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Gen, z-one is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 00:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14367288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimesong/pseuds/chimesong
Summary: Paradox has a headache, and Antinomy isn't helping.





	Asthenopia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carsinoska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carsinoska/gifts).



> Oneshot drabble set before the three survivors meet Aporia.

Paradox couldn’t hold back a yawn. He’d been going over code and equations for hours, now, and the exhaustion was finally starting to get to him. Half an hour ago he’d told himself to spend five more minutes at it and then stop, but there was simply too much he needed to work on. Leaving it all as it was currently was unthinkable. Z-one wasn’t a terrible coder—not by a longshot, really—but he’d found his savior was oddly prone to taking a brute-force approach to problems, and he really didn’t care to waste time having Antinomy repair things.

The lines of writing on his screen blurred together, the harsh LED light shifting into an unintelligible mess. Blinking to try and clear his vision, he took another sip of coffee. It tasted like watered-down cardboard, but it was what they had. He rested his head on his wrist, propped up in an attempt to keep from falling over, and sighed.

There was so much riding on this. Decades of life hardly mattered when after that there would be nothing. Sometimes Paradox found himself wishing that the last-ditch efforts of humanity didn’t rely on him, or at least that those last-ditch efforts were easier to accomplish. The end of days wasn’t so lenient, though, and he knew he had to make the most of what little time they had.

If that meant spending night after sleepless night hacking away at a keyboard in a dark room, then that was what he would do. It wasn’t as if he’d had a regular circadian rhythm before all of this. Z-one didn’t bother enforcing any sort of schedule on them, either, so Paradox was able to spend his time doing as he pleased.

There would have been a sense of freedom in it all, if it weren’t for the dread. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling pain behind his eyes. Was that happening more often lately, or was it just his imagination? This whole apocalypse was a headache.

He went still when he heard footsteps in the hall outside his door. It was impossible to walk silently on the metal floors, and at first Paradox wondered if it was a thief, some vagabond raiding their base—but those days were gone. There were no survivors left, and even if by some final miracle there was one, they couldn’t have gotten through Z-one’s defenses. 

However, the clock read an hour when neither of his companions should be awake. Rising somewhat unsteadily from his chair, he walked to the door and unlocked it. It slid open in a smooth mechanical motion, and he came face to face with Antinomy.

“Oh, you're awake!” Antinomy’s exclaim resounded in the hallway, reverberating off the steel walls and his eardrums.

Paradox had long since gotten used to his friend’s loudness, but it was late, he was tired, and the pulsing headache wasn't making his mood any better. “Obviously,” he snapped.

The vizor shielded the other man’s gaze, but he could see Antinomy peer over his shoulder to look in his room. He crossed his arms and shifted slightly to block his view. Antinomy’s brow furrowed, and he returned Paradox’s frown.

“If you keep looking at your screen with the lights off, your eyesight is gonna go bad. And what’re you doing still up, anyhow?”

“I should ask the same of you.” He decided to ignore the comment about the lights. “I’ve been working, what’s your excuse?”

Antinomy shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Paradox was a little tempted to shut the door on his face. Usually, Antinomy was the one he could count on to be too open about sharing information, but the other man’s body language was oddly closed off. It was jarring.

“What, had a nightmare?” he asked, weakly attempting to get a rise out of him.

The opaque red plastic betrayed nothing. Antinomy didn’t move.

An awkward silence stagnated between them, the background rattle of their Momentum reactor the only audible sound. Paradox realized he was holding his breath, but didn’t dare release it for fear of further offending Antinomy. 

Acutely aware of the headache behind his eyes, he stared at the vizor where he estimated Antinomy’s own eyes were. There was no guarantee the other man was even looking at him.

Antinomy abruptly turned his head down to stare at something, and smirked. Belatedly, Paradox took his hand away from his deck holster at his belt and looked to the side, feeling heat rising on his face.

“It’s still funny that a stuck-up guy like you has such a strong connection to your deck. You don’t really seem like the type.”

“That’s—you don't know—” Paradox sputtered. The tension was broken, but at what cost? Antinomy had, in the time that they'd known each other, always been interested in dueling. Z-one didn't have a deck (not one that either of them knew about), and so Paradox was frequently left to be the subject of his curiosity.

In some sense, he couldn't help sympathizing—dueling was likely one of the few things Antinomy still had that reminded him of how life had been before the Meklords. 

Antinomy held a thumb up to his own chest, confidence recovered in a flash. “I've spent my whole life dueling, you think I can't tell a true duelist when I see one? Most of the pro racers I've seen didn't believe in their cards half as much as you do. And you wasted your time on a science degree!” 

… But Paradox didn’t feel bad enough for the other man to suffer this indignity quietly.

“I've never driven a d-wheel in my _life,_ what makes you think I'd be any good—” he shouted.

“I could teach you!”

“No!”

“C’mon, you know I've been keeping Delta Eagle in good shape. It’s perfectly safe—”

“Absolutely not!”

Antinomy placatingly waved him off, grinning. “Fine, fine. I bet you'd be pretty good at dueling, though, if you'd just try.”

“You've never even seen me duel!” Paradox could feel the redness on his face, and prayed that the low-power hall lights were dim enough that Antinomy couldn't tell.

“That's right, I haven't. We should do that sometime—”

“ _No_.” Paradox backed into his room and shut the door in the other man’s face. Best to end the conversation quickly before he was coerced into a riding duel. God, what a mess. He leaned his head against the cold metal and heard Antinomy laughing on the other side. Even just a standing card game against a pro racer wasn’t something he dared attempt, regardless of his personal reasons for not wanting to duel.

He really wasn't any good, not that he'd ever try to prove it to Antinomy. As it turned out, being able to talk to duel monsters didn't make you some sort of genius at the game. It had been the one thing that let Paradox survive for so long, out in the wreckage of the city, but he didn’t even have a functional deck!

There was the sound of boots against steel, heading back down the hallway. He took a moment to breathe, exhausted, head still throbbing. Then he opened the door and called out to Antinomy.

“And that science degree is saving the future!”

**Author's Note:**

> carsinoska I'm years late but your fic is so good! I love psychic Paradox! Bless!!!


End file.
